Government Operations committee  Our original overarching mission is still our main task, which is safe and effective vaccines for Canadians. The way in which we execute that mission changes over time. As you know, new concerns have arisen over time. That happens with every public health immunization program. Th

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon. I'm honoured to be speaking with you today as one of the co-chairs of the COVID-19 vaccine task force. I know that I speak for my colleague, Mark Lievonen, and all members of the task force when I say that we've been very privileged to be ab

Industry committee  I would just be in agreement. We had on our committee experts in this area who are aware of the global situation and the time it takes to actually get a plant running a new vaccine and to do the tech transfer, and that was our conclusion.

Industry committee  As Mark said, the procurements are in place. The timelines are really quarterly rather than day by day. I know that the media cycle is every 24 hours, but I as a citizen and as a physician am very assured that vaccines will be coming within the quarterly requirements that the gov

Industry committee  The details of the procurement arrangements are not known to me, but in general, I think they are on these quarterly timelines. There are other factors at play, such as whether you have already domestic biomanufacturing on your soil, or a local candidate could be manufactured qui

Industry committee  Some of those vaccines.... For example, the Russian vaccine, the Gamaleya institute vaccine, is not a vaccine that is in our portfolio. It became authorized, as it were, very early, without any publicly available data for any scientists to evaluate. Those countries would also be

Industry committee  Thank you. I would just quickly say that I think it's become very clear that the earth is one country. We have to think about preparedness for emerging infectious diseases as a planet. Our countries are very much interdependent. I very much applaud the ability to build domestic

Industry committee  We provide advice to ministers, but we don't get a document back. Roger, do you want to explain the process?

Industry committee  The criteria are the scientific and technical merit, which are standard for each case. I don't want to take the member's time, but they're the aspects that I mentioned, the subcategories of safety, efficacy, animal data, good manufacturing practice, and so on.

Industry committee  Technical merit, the ability of the teams to bring their projects through to completion, was considered. The actual due diligence on each proponent was done by ISED. Roger, would that be correct?

Industry committee  I would say it is very much an iterative process. As we get new information, we will re-evaluate our advice and are continuing to do so. New knowledge is becoming available from all these aspects continuously and we will consider it and the merits of it as time goes on.

Industry committee  On the scientific advice with regard to procurements, the advice has been taken in a very timely manner. That's what I would say. Mark, would you have anything to add to that?

Industry committee  That's a very interesting question, because they are very similar across countries. We chose these similar platforms and they are the successful ones. It's absolutely amazing that there are at least six vaccines now that are safe and effective in humans. The Canadian ones are amo

Industry committee  The rollout is not within the remit of the task force. I could answer as an individual but not in my capacity as a member of the task force.

Industry committee  Okay. I have been involved in vaccine work for two decades now. We have this unique situation in Canada, where we're 13 little countries. Any vaccine that's authorized federally has to be rolled out according to each province and territory. Many countries in the world have natio